NPA GUERILLAS STRIKES IN NEGROS, WESTERN VISAYAS

Rebels posing as policemen attack airport being built in Silay

By Jeannette I. Andrade, Reporter

About 50 communist rebels, posing as policemen, attacked the construction site of a foreign-funded international airport in Silay City, Negros Occidental, early Sunday, burning down P30-million worth of equipment.

The P4.3-billion airport is one of three newly developed airports in three provinces mentioned by the President in her State of the Nation address in July.

The NPA raid is expected to further delay the project which is scheduled to be completed early in 2007.

The Takenaka-Itochu Joint Venture project, which began in August 2004, is funded by the 24th Yen Loan Package of the Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JICA) with Japan-based Hanjin Construction serving as a subcontractor.

Supt. Wesley Barayuga, Police Regional Office 6 (PRO6) deputy director for operations, said the rebels arrived at the construction site of the New Bacolod Airport at the boundary of Barangays 4 and Bagtic in Silay City about 2 a.m.

The rebels were wearing the uniforms of the PRO6 Regional Mobile Group.

Once inside, they overpowered and disarmed the handful of security guards.

The rebels then set fire to a computerized batching plant, the powerhouse, an engine auxiliary cylinder head and a Gomaco machine used in paving the roads and the airport runway.

The rebels then fled in the direction of Hacienda Imbang. They left unharmed the South Korean engineers and Filipino workers who were at the site at the time.

Supt. Celestino Guara, Silay City police station commander, said the attack might have been carried out by the rebels in retaliation for the refusal of the contractors to pay “revolutionary taxes,” the euphemism the rebels use for extortion.

The Silay City police and the Negros Occidental Provincial Mobile Group have gone after the raiders.

The 7,400-strong NPA has been waging a Maoist rebellion against Manila since 1969, making it one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgencies.

In Manila, Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro, the AFP public information office chief, said the attack in Silay City would not hamper the resolve of government forces to crush the 37-year-old insurgency.

“They launched the attack to show they are in a position of strength,” he said.

Bacarro admitted that the military considers the NPA as a “primary threat” in so far as the fight against internal security threats is concerned.

He theorized that the NPA gathered its fighters in Negros Occidental and nearby provinces to stage the attack.

“Based on experience, they have adopted that strategy,” he said.

Investigators partly blamed Korean contractor Hanjin who had refused to let government forces secure the site.

Police said the firm hired only “unarmed” security guards.

In another incident Sunday, a team from Army’s Special Forces Regiment who were on a test mission clashed with an undetermined number of NPA rebels in Caralangan, Nueva Ecija, near the boundary of Aurora.

Col. Arturo Ortiz, Special Forces chief, said the team from the Special Forces Operation Course 114 was on combat maneuver exercise when it chanced upon the rebels.

The rebels, who withdrew with undetermined number of casualties, were being pursued by the Special Forces troops.

--With AFP and PNA